Twenty years after the workplace bullying Act in France: What are the results and what does the future hold?
Abstract
In January 2002, just before Belgium and the Province of Québec, France was the first country to adopt a definition of “workplace bullying”, and also to adopt measures to combat this issue. The main benefit of the legislator's intervention was to recognise the pathogenic aspect of certain situations in the workplace that can lead to psychological disorders. This was the first time that the term “mental health” was mentioned in the French Labour Code. The spread of this concept in society has changed the way in which employees view certain situations. The people targeted now spot these unfair situations a little earlier and are less slow to seek help.
At the same time, by putting the spotlight on workplace bullying, the French system has begun to take into account other mental and emotional pathologies that were known but too often hidden. There is now an obligation to prevent such suffering, which is grouped together under the term “psychosocial risks” (PSR). Employers must take the necessary measures to ensure the safety and protect the physical and mental health of employees.
Unfortunately, about 20 years after, the legal standards punishing workplace bullying has not put an end to this violence in the workplace. While research around the world has highlighted the seriousness of it and its disastrous consequences both for the health and identity of the employees targeted and for the smooth running of organisations, bullying continues even in countries with specific laws.
The aim of the presentation is to show that priority should be given to primary prevention measures, but also that all levels of prevention are involved in the fight against bullying in the workplace. The provisions setting out the legal framework for tools to prevent bullying in the workplace will be examined by looking at how they are divided up in the Labour Code between the first part relating to individual employment relations and the fourth part dealing with health and safety in the workplace, but which also concern collective employment relations through the powers of employees’ representatives.
Over the last twenty years or so, the law on workplace bullying has evolved, been enriched and has been the subject of a particularly substantial legal regime in France. ILO Convention 190 on violence and harassment at work was ratified in April 2023. This initiative is an opportunity to renew the French approach to preventing bullying in the workplace, to rebuild the contours of the definition through discussions on workplace bullying and gender-based violence, to reconfigure the spaces in which they emerge (work-home commute, accommodation provided by the employer, business travel, digitalisation of work), but also to be all the more vigilant when it comes to domestic violence by raising awareness, taking it into account as part of the assessment of occupational risks and the impact on employees. Employers and workplaces have a role to play upstream.